Accident is design / And design is accident / In a cloud of unknowing.

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.

Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

[On The Waste Land:] Various critics have done me the honor to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.